Table of Contents for
Gaming Hacks

Version ebook / Retour

Cover image for bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition Gaming Hacks by Simon Carless Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2004
  1. Cover
  2. Gaming Hacks
  3. Credits
  4. Contributors
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Foreword
  7. Preface
  8. How to Use This Book
  9. How This Book Is Organized
  10. Conventions Used in This Book
  11. Using Code Examples
  12. Comments and Questions
  13. Got a Hack?
  14. 1. Playing Classic Games
  15. Legal Emulation
  16. Play Commodore 64 Games Without the C-64
  17. Play Atari ROMs Without the Atari
  18. Use Atari Paddles with Your PC
  19. Run Homebrew Games on the Atari 2600
  20. Create Your Own Atari 2600 Homebrew Games
  21. Play Classic PC Graphic Adventures
  22. Play Old Games Through DOSBox
  23. Play Reissued All-in-One Joystick Games
  24. Play Arcade Games Without the Arcade
  25. Add and Manipulate a MAME Frontend
  26. Keep Your ROMs Tidy and Organized
  27. Learn Game-Specific MAME Controls
  28. Filter Inappropriate MAME ROMs
  29. Autoboot into MAME Heaven
  30. Play Emulated Arcade Games Online
  31. Play Classic Pinball Without the Table
  32. Emulate the SNES on the Dreamcast
  33. 2. Playing Portably
  34. Play Games on Your iPod
  35. Mod Your Game Boy
  36. Take and Print Photos with Your Game Boy
  37. Compose Music on Your Game Boy
  38. Explore the GP32 Handheld Gaming System
  39. Take Your Console with You
  40. Explore the Bandai WonderSwan
  41. Play Real Games on Your PDA
  42. Install a PlayStation 2 in Your Car
  43. 3. Playing Well with Others
  44. Practice Proper MMORPG Etiquette
  45. Understand MMORPG Lingo
  46. Grind Without Going Crazy
  47. Make a Profit in Vana’diel
  48. Write MMORPG Macros
  49. Build an Effective Group
  50. Catch Half-Life FPS Cheaters Redhanded
  51. 4. Playing with Hardware
  52. Build a Quiet, Killer Gaming Rig
  53. Find and Configure the Best FPS Peripherals
  54. Adapt Old Video Game Controllers to the PC
  55. Choose the Right Audio/Video Receiver
  56. Place Your Speakers Properly
  57. Connect Your Console to Your Home Theater
  58. Tune Console Video Output
  59. Tune Your TV for Console Video
  60. PC Audio Hacking
  61. Optimize PC Video Performance
  62. Build a Dedicated Multimedia PC
  63. Use a Multimedia Projector for Gaming
  64. 5. Playing with Console and Arcade Hardware
  65. Play LAN-Only Console Games Online
  66. Hack the Nuon DVD Player/Gaming System
  67. Play Import Games on American Consoles
  68. Find a Hackable Dreamcast
  69. Play Movies and Music on Your Dreamcast
  70. Hack the Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit
  71. Unblur Your Dreamcast Video
  72. Use Your Dreamcast Online
  73. Host Dreamcast Games Online
  74. Burn Dreamcast-Compatible Discs on Your PC
  75. Burn Dreamcast Homebrew Discs
  76. Buy Your Own Arcade Hardware
  77. Configure Your Arcade Controls, Connectors, and Cartridges
  78. Reorient and Align Your Arcade Monitor
  79. Buy Cart-Based JAMMA Boards
  80. Programming Music for the Nintendo Entertainment System
  81. 6. Playing Around the Game Engine
  82. Explore Machinima
  83. Choose a Machinima Engine
  84. Film Your First Machinima Movie
  85. Improve Your Camera Control
  86. Record Game Footage to Video
  87. Speedrun Your Way Through Metroid Prime
  88. Sequence-Break Quake
  89. Run Classic Game ROM Translations
  90. Change Games with ROM Hacks
  91. Apply ROM Hacks and Patches
  92. Create PS2 Cheat Codes
  93. Hack Xbox Game Saves
  94. Cheat on Other Consoles
  95. Modify PC Game Saves and Settings
  96. Buff Your Saved Characters
  97. Create Console Game Levels
  98. 7. Playing Your Own Games
  99. Adventure Game Studio Editing Tips
  100. Create and Play Pinball Tables
  101. Put Your Face in DOOM
  102. Create a Vehicle Model for Unreal Tournament 2004
  103. Add a Vehicle to Unreal Tournament 2004
  104. Modify the Behavior of a UT2004 Model
  105. Download, Compile, and Create an Inform Adventure
  106. Decorate Your IF Rooms
  107. Add Puzzles to Your IF Games
  108. Add Nonplayer Characters to IF Adventures
  109. Make Your IF NPCs Move
  110. Make Your IF NPCs Talk
  111. Create Your Own Animations
  112. Add Interactivity to Your Animations
  113. Write a Game in an Afternoon
  114. 8. Playing Everything Else
  115. Tweak Your Tactics for FPS Glory
  116. Beat Any Shoot-Em-Up
  117. Drive a Physics-Crazed Motorcycle
  118. Play Japanese Games Without Speaking Japanese
  119. Back Up, Modify, and Restore PlayStation Saved Games
  120. Access Your Console’s Memory Card Offline
  121. Overclock Your Console
  122. Index
  123. Colophon

Record Game Footage to Video

Save your machinima masterpieces for posterity.

Machinima ( [Hack #63] ) once simply demos, created and played back entirely inside a game engine, such as the original Quake. An entire miniature Hollywood formed around using 3D games with no external editing of any kind. Things are different now. Machinima has grown up from its roots. Once a machinima creator has had his first taste of Adobe After Effects, it’s hard to lure him back to pure Quake editing. More importantly, many games don’t have the facilities to create machinima movies the old-fashioned way—even powerful, cool games such as Halo. Gamers had to extend their technology and learn how to capture normal video from games.

Want to make your own Warthog Jump? If you already know how to film your machinima ( [Hack #65] ), you need to record your footage. Keep reading.

From PC to Video

Films such as Red vs Blue are actually recordings of what the creators saw on their screens straight into some video format. You could do this by pointing a camera at the screen, adjusting the refresh rate of your monitor appropriately, and sitting there. Thankfully, there’s a better approach: TV-Out.

Nearly all video cards these days have some form of TV-Out capability. They’re mostly pretty good, too. ATI used to have the edge, and possibly still does, but as DVD playback has increased in importance, NVidia has improved their output quality markedly.

The solution is simple. Take your TV-Out, attach it to some form of video-recording device, and record the results. Here’s the step-by-step process:

  1. Enable your TV-Out. This usually means fiddling with the control panel of your particular video card’s drivers. See your card’s manual for details.

  2. Connect an S-Video or composite video lead to your video card (the socket’s normally next to the VGA Out) and connect the other end to a DV camcorder or a PC with some kind of video capture capability. You don’t need much here; a TV capture card, such as a Hauppage card, plus a fast hard drive will do the trick, particularly if the capture card can do MPEG-2 encoding.

  3. Start the capture device. You’re going to chew up lots of hard-drive space if you’re recording to PC, so make sure you have at least a few gigs free.

  4. Play your game. If you’re recording a networked session ( [Hack #65] ), remember that the PC that’s connected to the capture device is effectively your camera. Turn off the HUD graphics for the best effect. See your game’s manual for screenshot options.

Troubleshooting Overscan

If you see big black lines around your image, you have the infamous overscan problem, connected to the way your card encodes the TV signal. The fix depends on your hardware. ATI and Matrox users can simply adjust the overscan settings in their video card drivers to remove the black borders.

NVidia users don’t have that option right out of the box. Fortunately, the venerable TVTool (http://www.tvtool.de/) provides a bunch of TV-out tools for NVidia cards, including overscan removal. It costs approximately $20.

Alternatives to TV-Out

By now, a bunch of experienced recorders have shouted “FRAPS!”, to which I respond, “Bless you.”

FRAPS (http://www.fraps.com/) is a program that allows you to capture video directly from an OpenGL or DirectX stream, much like having a capture station on a single computer. The quality of the video you can capture is arguably higher frame for frame than TV-Out-captured video, but it requires a very powerful computer to capture FRAPS video at anything like real time. To capture 25-fps (frames per second) video, I recommend a RAID array and a CPU speed at least 2 GHz higher than the minimum your game requires, plus about half a gig of spare memory. FRAPS is great for rough captures, but for good-quality video, it currently can’t beat TV-Out for quality.

If you’re lucky enough to have access to very expensive video-editing gear, some high-end video cards now support component video output. This is a much higher-quality output signal, but only $5,000 plus video-editing setups can provide component video inputs at the moment. However, if you have this equipment, you’re laughing: this is the same setup LucasArts used to use to capture game footage for trailers.

See Also

For more information on capturing game video, see Machinima.com’s “Capturing Game Video” series (http://www.machinima.com/displayarticle2.php?article=149). It deals with virtually everything you need to know, in more detail than I can possibly cover here.